#A2000 memory expansion
8 messages in this thread
Larry- Not much chance of using another Board just like that, as I can not
invest unlimited time into experiments. But what is stack 8000 e.g. doing
exactly? My manuals tend to be cryptic. -Alfred
Alfred,
Each program, when run, has an area of memory allocated to it for use as a
'stack'. A stack is an area where subroutine return addresses are kept, and
where other data is often kept, such as paramters to be passed to subroutines,
temporary storage of registers, and so on. The default stack size is 4000
bytes.
What other programs fail when you use 'stack 8000'?
-larry
Larry – Thank you for this explanation. For the lack of such explanations I
find using computers often unnecessarily frustrating. I suspect the problem
could be just as easily an installation problen on harddisks. Again for
unexplained (or unexplicable?) reasons some program installations have to be
accompanied by assign statements in the startupsequence. e. g. assign program
dh0:program. I will experiment probably next in this direction first. My
machine seems to be, especially when running the text editor Kindwords,
somewhat crash-prone (2-4 over 3 hours).The event is not clearly traceable to a
particular activity. Currently my suspicion is that the screen, which
occasionally produces a slight crackle and and an occasional (tiny) streak
across the screen, could be the culprit. It is an awfully random affair.
Conversely the communications program A-Talk III seems to be very robust. I
have no evidence that the expansion board is at fault but for the fact that the
crashes are now more frequent. Evidence for a poor contact somewhere is
extremely weak and really hardly much more than a hunch. -Alfred
Alfred:
Here's what "assign" is all about vis a vis using them to make a program run
properly.
Many programs automatically look for something in a special place (a data file,
a subprogram, or maybe even the program itself). They often do this by
supposing you have them on a floppy disk with a certain name. For example,
Whap! looks for itself, its companion View program, and its various data files
for defaults, and forum information, on a floppy disk named Whap.
Now, if you want to put Whap! on a hard disk, you'll probably put it and it's
files in a directory (mine is called Telecomm — I have Whap!, Access! and
Handshake in there). So, I put a line in my startup–sequence that says:
assign Whap: dh0:TeleComm
Now, whenever ANY program looks for a floppy disk named Whap, it is "fooled"
into believing that my dh0:TeleComm directory IS that floppy disk.
Ray Lewis
Ray, This is crystal clear now. It is a pity you have not written the manual in
the first place (even going a little past 40 !). It is totally beyond my
comprehension why such matters are just about never spelt out clearly and why
producers of soft- and hardware seem to be quite incapable of producing a set
of instructions that actually work when put into practice. Even after the
installation of my hard-disk I could not refrain from writing to the
distributor, complementing his instructions with the admittedly few but
nevertheless crucial points I was ultimately only able to fathom with the help
of Compuserve, in capitals: COMPUSERVE……and this shortly before going into
my fifties (just imagine now *my* memory). – Alfred (Calling from Thalwil, near
Zurich)
Alfred:
I am continually amazed at what passes for "documentation" for home computer
users. However, the problem is endemic to virtually all areas of specialized
knowledge.
For the past 25 years, my job has been to learn about things, and tell other
people about them. I have been a business and technical journalist, a PR
manager for a chemicals, plastics and oil and gas company, a financial pr
manager for a pneumatics and hydraulics parts company, and am now a writer
specializing in shareholder communications in mergers, proxy fights, and
hostile tender offers.
Whether it it engineers, scientists, accountants, lawyers, or MBA's — the
communications problems are the same as in software. The specialists just
can't understand that their audience did get the same degree they did, nor do
they spend 90% of their time deeply involved in that person's specialty.
I guess that's good in a way — I get paid very well translating their jargon
into somthing ordinary people can understand (grin).
Ray Lewis
Splendid are in this chapter the instructions accompanying cameras and
flashlights! Translated from Japanese into English, from there to German again,
by a Japanese probably, and ultimately printed in HK or Dresden(East Germany)
to keep costs down. Proofreading was possibly done by a Swiss school leaver on
a holiday job. – Alfred